Humor's the focus at Kingston fest

State grants helping create new arts series

It's going to get serious in Kingston. Monday marks the launch of the Serious Laughs comedy and arts festival, which includes events in various disciplines, starting with a visual art show at the Kingston Public Library.

Monday marks the launch of the Serious Laughs comedy and arts festival, which includes events in various disciplines, starting with a visual art show at the Kingston Public Library.

The show, William Wegman's "Letters, Numbers, and Punctuation," is just the first coat of a layered festival, which is itself the first in a four-act opera of arts that will play out over the year.

The conductor of this "opera" is Chris Silva, the energetic artistic director of the Ulster Performing Arts Center in Kingston and the Bardavon Opera House in Poughkeepsie.

With Serious Laughs and his three other acts, he is assembling The 4 Seasons of the Hudson Valley Festival, an embrace of music, theater, comedy, dance and visual art, woven through the everpresent theme of urban renewal in Kingston and Poughkeepsie.

But let's backtrack. How did the 4 Seasons of the Hudson Valley Festival come to be?

"The governor, at sort of the midnight hour, announced through the New York State Council for the Arts that he was giving out (grants) across the state for presenters like us who would not do the same thing we always do, but rather something that is community outreach "»" Silva said, "that stimulates the local economy and uses tourism as a tool for collaboration, across different genres."

Silva added: "We didn't find out until winter was upon us," that they had gotten a grant.

The festival began to coalesce, starting with the comedy event that will last throughout April and into May.

UPAC had scheduled Lewis Black to perform April 28, and then, after two years of trying to land a Kathy Griffin performance, her management team came back with a date: April 21.

It couldn't have been more perfect timing.

With Black and Griffin serving as headlining acts, Serious Laughs will engage political and controversial discourse through humor, utilizing performance and visual art as primary outlets.

Along with the Kingston Public Library exhibit that is opening Monday, other events include a curated visual arts group show at UPAC opening April 20, a reading of "Sophie, the Surrealist Dog" on April 27, and a teen-adult writing workshop on "The Art of Protest" the same afternoon.

Local comedians will take to restaurants and other venues across Kingston April 20 and 27.

When that's over, it's time to prepare the next festival, which Silva says will focus on America and Kingston's heritage, with live music involving the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, and fireworks, a midsummer spectacular.

To Silva, it's simple. It's about "revitalization. Demonstration. In a concrete way: Look what the arts can do."